If theatre fans fall into two camps-those who love musicals and everyone else, then I humbly offer a third option-musicals only if done well. There my feet are planted, except when they’re tapping wildly under my seat, outside the theatre, on the sidewalk where the tap moves up my leg as I bop the bod home.
The Stratford Festival’s production of Crazy for You is a bopping whopper of a show.
Good seats help. One stretch and I’m on stage too, or so it was last weekend, as we were whisked back to the Aw shucks, golly gee, gotta dance era of Gene Kelly. If you don’t like the dude, you can quit right now and go surf somewhere else because we’re never going to get along.
There was a time I wished all my all-nighters had panache. I wanted to be Debbie, dancing between Donald and Gene, prancing all over my apartment, defying sleep, looking perky and giving the bird to creeping fatigue. All you hipster millennials with your threesomes, you’ve got nothing on this trio.
Crazy for You has some of this zip and lots of that dazzle. Stellar choreography by director Donna Feore make this frothy musical a wonderful romp. This is the musical to see after the gravitas of King Lear, a production starring Feore’s husband, Colm Feore, who made me forget any Lear I’ve seen before, such is the wonder and breadth of this guy’s talent.
Equal to his tremendous power is the chorus here in this musical, surely sprinkled with some of Kelly’s magic dust.
Our group raved about the dancers, strutting, leaping and tapping in several numbers, lending the show a brisk energy. But we were divided on the leads.
Josh Franklin, to me, was note perfect as Billy, the banker/wannabe dancer who is sent by mean old Mom to a small town in Nevada to foreclose on a derelict theatre. Franklin had a few moments of Ashton Kutcher-like charm, and dare I say, a twinkle here and there of my man, Gene Kelly himself. Predictably, Billy meets and falls in love with the theatre owner’s daughter, Polly, played by Natalie Daradich, here channelling a young Judy Garland in appearance, if not in performance.
My younger companions were not convinced of the pair, suggesting neither were light enough on their feet to be convincing. Both had comic chops and chemistry believable enough to anchor the piece. Let’s not kid ourselves. The show begins and ends with those timeless Gershwin tunes and a group of dancers Broadway should be tapping as a whole.
Making this material rock for contemporary audiences only works with serious talent in the director’s chair. Ms. Feore’s craft is keeping it earthy, vivid and joyous. When you sit as close as we did, you catch the performers on false notes. We never found any-the whole thing appeared as effortless as Kelly’s magical steps. Watching it is being dropped into one of his classic films for a brief, glorious minute.
Both Crazy For You and King Lear have been extended into October.
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